May 20

March 9

The Senate confirmed the nomination of Senator John Branch of Enfield as secretary of the Navy under President Andrew Jackson. Branch resigned his Senate seat that same day and served as navy secretary until May 12, 1831.

1833

December 16

Bedford Brown of Browns Store became chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture (today's Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry), serving until 1836. Brown, a Democrat, resigned from the Senate in November 1840 because he could not obey the instructions of the Whig-controlled state legislature.

1836

December 13

Asbury Dickins, originally of North Carolina but later of Philadelphia, took his oath as the newly elected secretary of the Senate and served until July 15, 1861. During his 25 years of service, Dickins professionalized the secretary's office and presided over the Senate on 20 occasions, a number matched by only one other secretary. Following his death in 1861, Dickins was interred in the Congressional Cemetery, Washington, D.C.

1840

November 25

Willie Person Mangum of Red Mountain was elected to fill the Class 2 vacancy caused by the resignation of Senator Bedford Brown. Mangum, who had served as the state's Class 3 senator from 1831 to 1836, took his seat December 9, 1840, and was reelected to full terms beginning in 1841 and 1847. Interestingly, Mangum, a Whig, had resigned the Class 3 seat in 1836 rather than obey instructions from the state legislature and assumed the Class 2 seat in 1840 after Democrat Bedford Brown resigned because he would not obey the instructions of the Whig controlled state legislature.

December 9

January 10

The Senate received President Millard Fillmore's nomination of conservative Whig senator George Edmund Badger of Raleigh to a vacancy on the Supreme Court. The nomination, however, encountered resistance from Senate Democrats and Free Soilers. By a single vote, the Democratic-controlled Senate postponed consideration of Badger's nomination until March 1853, allowing President-elect Franklin Pierce, a Democrat, to fill the vacancy. Badger served out the remainder of his Senate term and was not an active candidate for reelection in 1855.

1861

May 20

North Carolina seceded from the Union.

1861

July 11

June 25

Congress passed the Omnibus Act to admit the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, to representation in Congress. The statute, which conditioned admission to representation in Congress with ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, was enacted over President Andrew Johnson's veto. North Carolina was admitted to representation in Congress on July 4, 1868.

1868

July 14

Joseph Carter Abbott, born in Concord, New Hampshire, but later of Wilmington, North Carolina, was elected to fill the Class 2 vacancy in the term beginning March 4, 1865, and set to expire on March 3, 1871. John Pool of Elizabeth City was elected to fill the Class 3 vacancy in the term beginning March 4, 1867, and set to expire on March 3, 1873. Both men took their seats on July 17, 1868.

December 18

William P. Canaday of Wilmington, North Carolina, was elected Senate sergeant at arms and served until June 30, 1890.

1893

August 7

The Senate elected former Confederate army general and North Carolina representative (1881-1887) William Ruffin Cox as the secretary of the Senate. Cox served in that office until his retirement in 1900 and twice presided over the Senate.

January 10

August 8

Senator Clyde Roark Hoey of Shelby, chairman of the Investigations Subcommittee of the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments, opened public hearings into allegations of influence peddling to secure government contracts.

1954

June 5

Samuel James Ervin, Jr., of Morganton, was appointed by the governor to fill the vacancy caused by death of Senator Clyde R. Hoey. Ervin took his seat on June 11, 1954, and subsequently won an uncontested election to fill the remainder of Hoey's term. Reelected three times, Ervin resigned his seat on December 31, 1974.

1956

March 11

Nineteen southern senators, including North Carolina's Samuel J. Ervin Jr. and William Kerr Scott, signed "the Declaration of Constitutional Principles," known as the "Southern Manifesto" in opposition to the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Members read the entire text of the manifesto into the Congressional Record.

January 3

Jesse Helms of Raleigh began the first of his five Senate terms. Helms, who previously had worked for North Carolina senators Willis Smith and Alton Lennon, served for 30 years, cast over 11,000 roll-call votes, and received the Golden Gavel Award in October 1973 for presiding over the Senate for 100 hours in a single session. At the time of his retirement in 2003, Helms became the state's longest serving popularly elected United States senator at 30 years, and tied the Senate service record of former senator Furnifold M. Simmons.

January 5

June 29

Senator John Porter East of Springfield, Illinois, but later of Greenville, North Carolina, died of carbon monoxide poisoning in what was later ruled to be a suicide. East was elected to the Senate in 1981 and used a wheelchair as a result of contracting polio in the mid 1950s.

July 28

Senator John Edwards of Raleigh was nominated for vice president of the United States on the Democratic Party ticket headed by another incumbent senator, John F. Kerry of Massachusetts. The ticket was defeated in the general election and Edwards's single term in the Senate ended on January 3, 2005.